Bess Streeter Aldrich - Song of Years

His voice trembled a bit with the emotion of the moment. To have come all this distance to claim that which was his own, not knowing just where it would lie or what contours it would have. And now at last to see it before him with satisfying clarity.

It was something like the sudden meeting with a person of whom you had long heard but whose face you had never seen. It was almost like keeping a tryst with . . . Why, it came pretty near to being like the first meeting with that girl he’d sometimes imagined.

He took off his cap and the sun brought out the glints in his yellow hair.

“Wayne Lockwood,” he grinned widely, “do you take this land to be your lawfully wedded own, to have and to hold in sickness and in health?”

Jocularly he made his answer in a feminine voice: “I do.”

“Section . . .” He consulted his papers, naming aloud the numbered notations there. “Do you take Wayne Lockwood to be your lawfully wedded . . .?”

“Caw, caw, caw!” The grackles wheeled and dipped in noisy inquisitiveness. All the solemnity was gone. Wayne Lockwood threw back his head and laughed at Nature’s raucous answer to the impromptu wedding.

“Well, anyway,” he said boyishly, “I pronounce you mine . . .”

The gay words died in the utterance for not a half-dozen rods away to the east, a top-buggy with glistening body, pulled by a sleek pair of prancing bag horses was coming directly toward him through the prairie grass.

He stood there and stared. It was rather unbelievable. All afternoon he had seen no living thing on the beaten trail. And now to the north of the trail, off that one path between Dubuque and the twin settlements of Prairie Rapids and Sturgis Falls, came a buggy containing two men.

When they drew close, the bays stepping in perfect unison as though on some city boulevard, Wayne saw that the men were well dressed, that one was older than the other, and that they were more surprised to see him, if such a thing were possible, than he was to see them.

The team stopped with a few prancing didoes and the driver leaned forward toward Wayne as though expecting him to come to the buggy. It was characteristic of Wayne Lockwood, perhaps, that, tall and straight under the maple at the creek’s edge, he should stand unmoving.

Apparently seeing that Wayne was not making any move to come to them, the younger of the two men got out. He was a personable young fellow not much older than Wayne himself, dark, with dapper mustache, and he was now saying: “How do you do?”

“ ’Do, sir.”

“Little off the trail, aren’t you?” He spoke affably.

“Quite a peace.”

“Looking for land?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good land up this way. We’ve located several fine sections. You will probably find something you like.”

“Yes . . . I’ve found it.”

The young man was not quite so cordial now. “Not this section?”

“This quarter-section.”

“Oh, no . . . this one is mine . . . this half.”

Wayne looked down at the paper still in his hand, traced the penciled line of the creek to the numbered section. “I made this out from a government map . . . and it’s not filed on yet, according to this,” he said quietly.

“No.” The young chap admitted it readily enough. “We’re driving back to Dubuque, though, to-morrow to attend to that matter.”

He smiled with such oily condescension that Wayne took an immediate dislike to him. And when he asked: “Did you walk out from Dubuque?” it seemed to take on the tone of a superior addressing an inferior.

“Yes.”

“I thought I didn’t see any conveyance about.”

That was perilously close to a sneering comment. When Wayne remained silent, the stranger volunteered affably enough: “Well . . . we’ll go on. We’re staying at a tavern in Sturgis Falls but will be driving back to Dubuque to-morrow.”

Not particularly versed in the nuances of the human voice, still Wayne thought he detected the semblance of a threat in the statement.

The stranger could well afford to be pleasant, though, with those prancing bays stamping the prairie grass, ready to take him back to the land-office one hundred miles away. So he was saying cheerfully: “Better luck in your next choice.”

He had walked back to the carriage now where his silent companion awaited him. One foot on the buggy step, he turned. His eyes narrowed and his voice held distinct arrogance and insult. “And don’t you try anything foolish around here to make trouble.”

They were gone, driving away to the southwest, presumably to join the trail again and go on to Sturgis Falls for the night.

Wayne walked over and threw himself down on the creek’s bank. He was disappointed and chagrined. To be sure there were countless other unclaimed sections. Almost was there all of Iowa from which to choose. It was foolish to be so upset because he could not have the one he had picked so enthusiastically. He was no child to be angry because he could not have his way. But this particular section had everything for which he could wish. Over in his mind he called the roll of those characteristics: rich loam . . . water . . . white sand . . . gravel . . . timber . . . only a few miles from the twin settlements of Prairie Rapids and Sturgis Falls.

If that smart Aleck had really owned it now, he would have walked on with no thought of covetousness. But that was the hardest thing to swallow in the whole business, that, after all, it was not yet the other fellow’s any more than his. Only by virtue of owning that swift team would the stranger be able to claim it.

And now he could see his folly in failing to purchase his own team at the sale there in Dubuque. Because he wanted to be sure of this venture, satisfy himself first that the lands were good, worth their dollar and a quarter an acre, he had held off from buying horses, using his own two good legs for the journey.

Yes, his legs were good but scarcely could be expected to compete with those prancing bays. The dapper stranger had said they were going to stay all night at a Sturgis Falls tavern and then start back to Dubuque to file on this.

“Gosh all hemlock!” He sat up suddenly as a wild idea took possession of his mind. “If only . . .”

He leaped to his feet and stood looking to the east where even now the late afternoon shadows were beginning to cluster. Pools of pale yellow light lay on the prairie like gold breastpins on a woman’s green dress. Dubuque! One hundred miles! It might as well have been half a world away. He thought of the three long days and half-nights on the trail, sleeping a few hours in a log house at Delhi, another time at the log tavern in Independence.

But added to the certainty that the men were going to Sturgis Falls for the night were a few possibilities. It might be late in the morning when they would get started. There was just a chance he himself might be overtaken by some one with whom he could ride part of the way.

He looked down at his strong young limbs incased in calfskin boots as though there he might find the answer to his questioning. If only they were the seven-league boots of his childhood tales.

Suddenly he sat down again on the creek’s bank, unloosed the straps, removed the boots and stockings, and bathed his feet in the cool water. Drying them on the heavy socks, he took a fresh pair from a coat pocket, put on these and his boots. Then he rinsed out the first pair and hung them on a scrub oak.

“To hold my property down for me,” he grinned.

Now he let his glance once more sweep the coveted section, seeing it under the slanting rays of the sinking sun. Already shadows were crowding into the thick undergrowth of hickory, hazelnut, and burr oak there on the creek’s bank.

The land, slightly higher than that nearer the trail, rolled into faintly discernible swales like solidified waves of a green sea.